Coast to Coast Bully Walk/ National Pit Bull Awareness Day - Eastern Mas...

CHOOSING A WIDER LENS

Everyone sees the world through their own lens.  In other words everyone sees the world around them from their own perspective that is based on their own culture and on their own upbringing at times but usually always according to their own personal experiences.  Few of us are ever told, taught or asked to consider the 'bigger picture' that is life on planet earth and The Universe but are typically led into seeing everything around us through the lens that is 'I', meaning perhaps from a place of our own ego.  Throughout human history it seems that for the most part we humans have become accustomed to unconsciously making ourselves the center of the universe and everything going on around us is considered on it's benefits and/or disadvantages to ourselves.  Oddly enough a 'sense of self' is rarely a part of it even though so much of the teachings as we grow up being about us, what is best for us, what isn't good for us and what serves us the best.  So we see the world only through the eyes of our experience and how everything we see in the world affects us.  

Some may call it human nature and some may not agree that it's our nature but for most of us we grow up seeing only the small little world that surrounds us where everything that happens either involves us or affects us in some way.  There are some however who choose to think beyond the small and by comparison insignificant little world that was created around us at birth and that we continue through life to live in and relate to.  Some choose to view the world with a much wider lens and thank goodness for those humans who stretch beyond themselves, their own intimate circle and who yearn to experience the world around them as if it were their own little intimate world.

The value of looking at the world through a wider lens is beyond measure because when we choose to do so we learn very quickly that first of all nearly every other human being on earth shares the same dreams, the same aspirations to succeed in life and the same desires for themselves and their progeny.  We all, whether we want to admit it or not, have the same exact 'needs' in life.  'Needs' meaning those basic things that no human being can survive without; things like shelter, water, food and relationships that nurture us and give us a soft place to fall when the rigors of life become too much for us.  Therefore we are all of the same mind, cut from the same cloth and have the same basic needs no matter our gender, our ethnic origin, our national affiliation, our religious affiliation and our sexual orientation.  When one chooses to only view life through that small, finely focused lens of 'self' and our own intimate small world we can't see how truly similar we are to every other human on earth and we may even grow to fear or be wary of those who are different than we are in skin color, in ethnic origin, in religious affiliation, in national affiliation and in sexual orientation.  

Our inability to view the world around us through a wider lens can cause us not only to fear but to hate and to seek to destroy those who are no like us, who don't look like us and who don't have a culture like we do.  But when we choose to widen that lens to encompass the human race regardless of our differences so much changes.  In fact EVERYTHING changes because we are truly thinking, feeling, reacting and living as a human being among other human beings.  With a wider lens we tend to see that the divisions that our ancestors have made and we continue to honor are only divisions created by ideas and are not real, honest and true divisions.  With a wider lens we begin to see the beauty in others and begin to embrace all of those delicious and exciting differences that so many others have based their divisions on.  As we widen our ideas about and vision of the world to encompass all of humanity we stop seeing divisions and start seeing the similarities that can bind us one to the other.  All of a sudden those state lines and country borders don't seem to mean as much to as as they once did and we begin to realize that whatever divisions that have been created over time are creations of fear, of power over others and of pride and ego that may have served us at one time but no longer serve us.

There has got to be a point in the evolution of humankind where we are going to stop being patriots of our country and start being proud citizens of the planet earth. At some point we are going to evolve enough to understand that all of those divisions that so many have held so dear and have honored for so many millennia have brought us much more pain and suffering than they ever have of peace, harmony and prosperity.  We must evolve and we will but not if some of us don't start right now.  Sure many in the world aren't ready to think in these terms and most definitely are not ready to begin to live life as one world, a whole human specie, but we can't wait for them but must make our own way.  So to that end those of us who are awake to this and aware of what needs to change in order to evolve to a new world order as one humanity must begin today and we must begin by living this every day in our own little worlds as if we are indeed in 'the world' in it's entirety.  If we don't live it it will never happen and we all know we want it to happen so we must live it today.

Let us begin to see ourselves as the astronauts see us from the International Space Station and that is as ONE world and ONE people moving through The Universe throughout the infinite that IS...

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE POWER OF HATE

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE POWER OF HATE: Was talking to someone yesterday, a friend, who stated that they 'hated' someone. Without a single thought I immediately responde...

THE POWER OF HATE

Was talking to someone yesterday, a friend, who stated that they 'hated' someone. Without a single thought I immediately responded with, "I don't hate anyone, no matter who they are or what they've done," and the moment I spoke this I realized just how true it is. I truly do not hate anyone, not even people who the majority of others believe deserve to be hated.

I can remember back when I used to 'hate' a lot of people. I hated pretty girls/women, I hated rich people, I hated hateful people, I hated people who exert their power over the helpless, I hated most politicians, I hated so many people from different walks of life and I even hated my childhood. I just hated at random believing all the while that somehow my hate of them would affect them in some way so that they would know they were hated and would feel badly as a result or would somehow be punished by it. I can't honestly say exactly when I made the conscious decision to stop hating people, hating situations, hating things I could not control; maybe it just happened when I stopped viewing myself as a powerless, helpless victim in life and stopped shirking responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Maybe it was when I stopped blaming the people and the things around me for how I felt about them.

About ten years ago or so I truly grasped what a powerful emotion hatred is as well as how damaging it can be, most especially to the person harboring that hatred, and I made a conscious decision to stop using the word 'hate' in my vocabulary. I realized just how easily and how often I made the comment about just about everything whether important or trivial that I hated it. I hated the weather, I hated the bills I owed, I hated a movie, I hated what someone was wearing, I hated how someone looked, I hated the traffic...mainly I 'hated' just about everything and verbally confirmed that hatred so many times in a single day that I really couldn't count all the times I said that I 'hated' something. Maybe I felt as if hate wasn't that bad and it's okay to feel hatred for things, for people, for situations, etc. because it's just a part of being human, right? OR maybe it was that I realized that it was a 'learned' response to things that I wasn't comfortable with from growing up in a society, and maybe even a home, where hating was accepted and flowed through life as if hating things was a normal part of life for everyone everywhere.

We've all seen hatred and many of us have experienced the power of hatred in our lives. We've been hated or maybe we've hated someone else and always it seems to the detriment of our own selves. When we are the victim of hatred of course it's detrimental to us. Sometimes we don't even understand 'why' we are hated by someone else or what we may have possibly done to earn their hatred and sometimes we know exactly why someone hates us. Regardless, many of us have felt the pain of being hated or even disliked by another human being. I guess then that would beg the question why any of us who have felt the weight and the pain of being hated by someone else would ever choose to inflict that same thing on another living human being. What a conundrum that is but apparently not one that many people consider in their lifetimes considering how many decent, loving, caring and seemingly aware and awake people express hatred toward things or people almost on a daily basis.

So is it inherently 'wrong' to hate? I'm sure that many people, especially those who express hatred for other people and things in their lives, would say that it's not inherently wrong and that in fact it's just a natural human emotion that everyone experiences. But perhaps what those who feel hatred is natural and is acceptable to harbor within ourselves are neglecting to admit is the power of hatred to destroy us; to destroy the people we or others hate, to support systematic hatred on an institutional level, to drive peoples to wage war on the other groups of people who are objects of their hatred, to limit how successful certain people can be in life, to drive some people with extreme hatred for others to subjugate them and even kill them as if their lives are not of any value simply because those hated are the object of the haters hatred (as if the victims are the sole cause of the hate waged against them). When one reflects, if one chooses to do so honestly, one can very quickly and easily see the weight of hatred on our world throughout history and today. One also must admit, if they choose to be honest with themselves, that as a emotion hatred carries quite a bit of 'energy' with it and that when we ourselves choose to feel and experience the emotion of hatred that we are adding to the weight and the force of the cumulative hatred being felt and expressed in the world today.

So, there's a 'payoff' for everything that we human beings do. There's no feeling we feel, no thoughts or words we choose to have and express, there's no action that we take or thing that we do that doesn't give us some sort of payoff on an emotional level. The payoff for everyone is going to be different based on who we are but still there's some sort of payoff, be it self-satisfaction or validation or to prove something to someone or to just make us feel superior or good in some way. Maybe my payoff for hating in the past was to help myself feel superior and just a bit maybe because back then I felt powerless in a way and felt that hating those or that which I felt powerless about was a great defense against them or it. But when I got honest with myself and really took a look at the kind of human being that I wanted to be in this life I realized that hate just wasn't a part of it; hate couldn't make me stronger, hate couldn't destroy my enemies, hate couldn't change a single thing and hate couldn't comfort me. That is why I stopped hating and saying I hate things; even if I really didn't hate something but just used that word out of habit and because so many other people use it.

In the end hate is not just a 'word' people use to express their discomfort or disgust with something or someone. Hate is an emotion and ALL emotions carry weight and power in them adding to the collective energy that flows through everything that happens in the world. What kind of contribution do we want to make to the energy of the world? What kind of energy do we want to add to the energy of the rest of life on planet earth? Do we 'really' hate all the things that we say we hate or do we just use the word because it's easy, it's there, everyone else uses it and it's a habit? Then IF we really DO hate even half of the things that we say we hate how does it affect the object of our hatred, if at all, and how does it make us feel about our place in the world or our own personal security, our own happiness?

In closing I'd just like to share a thought about hate. Carrie Fisher, the actress (Princess Leia of Star Wars), expressed her thoughts about resentment many years ago that still hangs around today and is embraced by many as the rock solid truth. Although her reference was 'resentment' we all have to acknowledge that hatred is truly a form of resentment toward another person or a thing so I think her sentiment holds true and applies to hate. The sentiment goes like this:

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FINDING HUMANITY

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FINDING HUMANITY: Most, if not all of us, understand what and who humanity is.  At least we understand the meaning of the word. Humanity according to the Mir...

FINDING HUMANITY

Most, if not all of us, understand what and who humanity is.  At least we understand the meaning of the word. Humanity according to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary is by definition:

‘the quality or state of being human; the quality of being kind to other people or to animals and/or all people.’

Not wanting to focus on the negative for long we still need to mention that today, based on what most of us believe is going on in the world around us, it feels a whole lot like very few grasp the meaning of humanity or want to be a part of humanity that contributes in a positive way.  There is war, poverty, human slavery, terrorism, tyranny, oppression, racism and truly hateful people in the world today plus more.  Yet if we choose to look away from what is presented to us by the news media and look away from the actuality of some of the isolated, but still quite devastating, events happening in the world today we can if we choose see something bigger and much more positive than today’s most common world view.  To look away doesn’t mean that we deny negative things are happening or that we don’t care but looking away, even if for a brief time, helps us get a better grasp on what really is going on in the majority of the world and can serve to renew our commitment to being a positive force in the world.  The weight of the negativity, the struggle, the hatred, the battle over power and wealth can get to some people and it can poison their soul.  We’ve all seen it in others and have known others who are unable to step back and see the entire world and not just the bits of it that are in turmoil where life is suffering and suffering is life. We’ve seen how cynical, how shut off from others and how hopeless they can get and most of us don’t want to be ‘that way’ so we keep on keeping on trying to keep it all in perspective.

Perhaps the answer is for those of us who are awake, aware and who truly do want to make a positive impact on the world, on humanity, to come together as ONE adding our own individual gifts and power to something bigger than ourselves.  It may not require ‘official’ organizations or groups to assemble those of us who want the world to be a better place for all but it does require us to act locally while we are thinking globally.  It requires us each to support everyone around us, even strangers, with our kindness and our compassion; even if it’s only shown to others through a smile, a nod of the head and/or a kind word.  Giving that which we all seek, being treated with kindness and compassion by others, isn’t difficult. In fact it’s really as easy as falling off of a log because it truly comes naturally to every living being; even those human beings who are filled with hatred, a lust for power and wealth and who defend themselves by hating and harming others before they can be mistreated or harmed. 

It is within us ALL to be kind and compassionate whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  But if we don’t believe it’s there or if we believe that it is either beyond our capability or will be difficult to cultivate within ourselves then we can’t access that most human part of ourselves.  You’ll find a lot of people, some professional, who say that it’s ‘human nature’ to be cruel, to be ultra-competitive, to exert our will over others and more but I will never believe that to be true.  I refuse to accept that ‘excuse’ for behaving in negative ways because once we get in touch with our true inner selves we can easily access our ‘humanity’.  The layers we build over our lifetimes are often protective in nature and we feel that they serve us, and serve us well, because they protect us from being hurt by others. But the ‘worst’ thing that could ever happen to any of us is NOT to get our feelings hurt by another person or persons. The ‘worst’ thing that can happen to us is to deny ourselves the experience of being a caring, compassionate, empathetic and giving person to our fellow humans, because to deny that all of this exists within ourselves is to deny our own humanity.  When we lose our humanity we lose the ability to connect to others in ways that bring us much more blessings than trials.  When we lose our humanity we are adrift in a cold, dark Universe that brings us nothing but pain anyhow so why not choose to be that which we know this world needs a whole lot more of? 

In this Infinite Universe that we live in and were created by there is infinite possibility for every one of us and if we choose to join together to explore those possibilities, against all odds, then we can build a world where many fewer humans suffer at the hands of other humans.  I truly believe that it IS possible to love our way out of the dark and into the light; not just for ourselves but for all.  We are currently existing according to a certain paradigm and the paradigm will continue as it is until the pendulum is swung and TOGETHER we cause a paradigm shift. 

There are, I believe, infinitely more decent human beings who are aware and awake, if not open to being aware and awake, that we share our planet with than many of us believe there are. Thus I have great hope that if we begin to join together, support one another and love one another as the brothers and sisters that we truly are (by virtue of our shared DNA) we can affect a paradigm shift that will change everything.  We may never live in a world where there is zero poverty or zero racism or zero hostility or zero subjugation of one group of people by another but we most certainly can, I believe, create a world together where there is more peace and love and kindness and generosity and compassion and mutual support than there is all of those negative things we want to put an end to in our lifetimes.

We can do this but we must come together with others who feel the same as we do so we can begin to shift that paradigm away from all the pain and suffering to a world where there is true equality for all along with the ability to pursue life and liberty for ourselves.  A world where love is the norm and hatred is extremely rare...

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FEAR PROFITS A MAN NOTHING

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FEAR PROFITS A MAN NOTHING: While the quote I used for this blog is a quote from a film, '13th Warrior' released in 1999 based on Michael Crichton's book ...